


I Got No Reason For The State I'm In

by LayALioness



Series: Bellarke Halloweek! [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Wendigo, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4974463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wells is okay with pining for his super hot RA from afar, for a lot of reasons--like the fact that he's a monster, that has to eat human flesh.<br/>But then his best friend shows up as a cat on his doorstep, and Raven Reyes is going to help, whether he likes it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Got No Reason For The State I'm In

**Author's Note:**

> For booh-badley, who asked for Wendigo Wells + badass witch Raven + "I helped hide your illegal pet cat from our RA" so I came up with this unholy combination. 
> 
> Also this was supposed to be Raven/Wells, but it ended up mostly being Wells and Clarke being badass BFFs oops.

Wells and Clarke got into the whole magic thing pretty accidentally.

It was a Ouija Board, first. Wells was sleeping over for the first time since Clarke’s dad died, and they were camped out in the Griffin’s massive backyard, in the Little Tikes tent that barely fit them anymore. They had to sleep with their legs sticking out the front flap, but it was summer, so that was fine.

Clarke brought out the Ouija Board after the portable movie player ran out of battery. At first, Wells just thought she was bored.

“We’re holding a séance,” she told him, unpacking the box. It was made out of cheap plastic, with a giant star-shaped sticker that boasted GLOWS IN THE DARK. Wells studied it skeptically.

 “Don’t you need more than two people?” he asked, and Clarke shook her head, bringing out a piece of paper. She’d printed instructions off the internet; apparently, she was serious.

“I’m going to call on my dad.” She said it with a stony expression, as if waiting for him to say no.

Wells shrugged. “Cool, I guess. How does it work?”

Clarke grinned, clearly relieved, and explained it to him. She dug out the weird triangle and they put both index fingers on the edges. Then she said, a little hesitant, “If you want, we can call your mom, too.”

Wells’s mom had died just after he was born. It didn’t have to do with his birth, but he couldn’t help feeling at least a little responsible. He’d read somewhere that during pregnancy, the mother’s immune system was weaker, since she was giving all her important nutrients to the baby. So if it weren’t for him, she probably could have survived—hardly anyone died from the flu, these days.

“Sure,” he agreed, mostly just because he didn’t think the thing would actually _work_. It was glow-in-the-dark plastic. She’d probably bought it from the Target in town.

“Spirits,” Clarke said, in what was apparently her séance-voice, “We call you forth. Please, speak through us. We call Jacob Willoughby Griffin, please hear us.”

Then they waited for a minute. Two, then three. Nothing happened. Clarke frowned, reread her instructions, and repeated the words. They waited some more.

“Maybe he’s not home,” Wells suggested, but she didn’t laugh.

“You’re right,” she said, “He’s not.” And then to his horror, she started to _cry_.

Clarke crying always horrified Wells, no matter how many times it happened. And they’d known each other since they were babies—Wells had no memory of time before Clarke—so he’d seen her cry a few times, but. They were recently twelve, and Clarke had stopped crying in kindergarten. She hadn’t even cried at Jake’s _funeral_ , even though Wells—and Abby—had.

“Hey,” he said, reaching out to hug her a little. She was sobbing, huge heaving breaths and face going pink with the effort. It didn’t take much before she was collapsing against him, making his shirt go dark in damp rivets. “It’s okay, it’s—that board probably just doesn’t work, you know? We should find a vintage one online. I bet e-bay has something. Maybe we need fancy candles. In the movies, they always use candles.”

Clarke gave a last pitiful sniff. “Yeah?”

“Definitely,” he said, firm, and they watched _Home Alone 2_ on his dad’s laptop, so they could point out all the plot holes until they fell asleep.

After that, Clarke was on a mission; she’d always done better when she had a goal in mind. She scoured the shadiest corners of the internet, prowled through the occult section of Barnes & Noble, and watched _The Covenant_ and _Charmed_ for days.

He drew the line at Voodoo dolls.

Finally, she found him after school, just a few months after their failed séance. She dropped a potato sack down on the picnic table, where he’d set up shop for his Home Ec project. He had to cross stitch a movie scene on a canvas screen, and he’d chosen _The Covenant_ , because by now he basically had the film memorized.

“I’ve figured it out,” Clarke announced, dropping down to the seat across from him. Wells poked at the sack suspiciously. It didn’t feel full of potatoes.

“Figured what out?” he asked, even though he pretty much knew already. Clarke’s unimpressed look meant she knew as much, too.

“We have to have something that was important to the deceased,” she explained, digging a hand into the sack and pulling out a Hawaiian shirt. Wells recognized it as Jake’s favorite.

Then she pulled out a deck of cards unlike any he’d ever seen before. They were made out of some sort of thin wood, and unevenly cut, each bigger than his whole hand. There were different pictures painted on each side, sometimes just different colored triangles, or circles all different shape, or three squiggly lines all in a row. But some shapes he could recognize, like the horse with big skinny wings, and the skull with crossed bones.

“What are those?”

“Tarot cards,” she said. “Well, sort of. They’re called Bone Cards, but they’re basically the same thing. They’re a better conduit to the other plane, than the Ouija Board.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done your research,” Wells said, poking through the cards. Clarke leveled him with a heavy stare, which was probably warranted. Everyone knew Clarke Griffin _always_ did her research.

“We’ll contact my dad tonight,” she declared. “Bring something of your mom’s, if you want to.”

They brought the tent back out into the yard, even as Abby hinted that maybe they’d _grown a little too big for it_. It was tradition, after all.

Wells brought his mom’s old hair brush—the one his dad kept hidden in his dresser, tucked under his socks like a secret—even as he told himself over and over that, Bone Cards or not, it probably wouldn’t work this time around, either. He wanted to support Clarke, that’s all.

They ended up ducking out of the tent completely, because Clarke actually _had_ bought fancy candles, black and white and purple ones that she lit with old-fashioned matches. “For ambiance,” she said sagely, and he didn’t question it.

She brought out a bunch of herbs and spices, the kinds in plastic bottles that you get at the grocery store. Thyme, sage, cinnamon, tarragon. She shook them out into her hands and crunched them all up, sprinkling them over the candles in a wide circle. Then she put her dad’s shirt in the middle, and Wells’s mom’s brush, and told him to sit inside with her.

“If we’re outside the circle, even a little, the other spirits could get to us,” she warned him, and Wells resolutely did not roll his eyes, because he is a very good friend. The _best_ friend, really, since he was agreeing to try and talk to dead people with her.

Then she took the Bone Cards, and laid them in a line, backs up. She picked one from the middle, and flipped it around so he could see. It was the squiggly lines.

“Water,” she said. “That’s a good one. Spirits, we beseech you!” She looked at him pointedly.

“We beseech you,” he echoed, and she nodded.

“Please, find us the voices of Jacob Willoughby Griffin, and Marsha—what’s your mom’s middle name?”

“Caroline,” Wells said, amused. “Her maiden name was Potts, if that helps.”

“Please, find us the voices of Jacob Willoughby Griffin, and Marsha Caroline Potts-Jaha,” Clarke called. “We wish to speak with them. We give you these tokens, as gifts, and a way for you to seek them out.” She lifted the shirt and hairbrush up in the air.

“What, are the spirits bloodhounds, now?” Wells asked, and she glared at him.

She put the tokens down, and flipped a second card over, revealing some sort of inky blob that sort of looked like a toad.

“Earth,” she explained. “Definitely a good sign. Spirits of the earth, we ask for your aid!” She turned over the third card—the skull and crossed bones.

“Let me guess,” Wells said, “Death?”

Clarke shook her head, looking confused. “Transformation. I don’t know the words for that one.”

A sudden breeze came through, blowing out two of the candles, and sending half of the cards—including Transformation—into the grass a few yards away. Wells stood to go fetch them.

Clarke reached for his arm. “You can’t leave the protective circle!”

“I’ll be okay,” he told her, gently prying her fingers away. “And if I’m not, you can have the good spirits rescue me.”

He managed to reach the Transformation card, just a few feet from the last candle, before everything around him went dark. Clarke and the candles and the tent were all gone. He was still in the field, but it was different. When he turned around, the Griffin’s mansion had disappeared. He looked up, but there were no stars, even though he could still see all around him—the nothingness that spread out on each side. There was just him, and the grass, and the card in his fingers.

And then, there was something else. A voice.

 _Let me in_ , it said, and Wells shivered. Or rather, the voice did. The voice itself was a shiver, running down his spine all the way to his toes. _Let me help you._

“Help with what?” Wells asked, and he heard the words, even as his jaw stayed shut.

 _You are lost_ , the voice whispered, swirling all around him. It didn’t _feel_ like air, so much as _exist_ like it. Like if he moved, he might dispel it.

But when he tried to wave a hand, or step away, he found he couldn’t. He couldn’t even blink.

 _Let me help you_ , the voice said, and it sounded like Ms. Kane, the guidance counselor at school, who called him in to talk about his mom once a month. Like they somehow had all the answers, if Wells would only let them help.

“Are you my mom?” he asked, and the voice laughed. It felt like laughter, at least. Sounded amused, maybe even pleased. Wells couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

He’d _known_ it wouldn’t be her, couldn’t be, but. He’d hoped, just a little, all the same.

 _Let me in,_ it said, licking at his skin like a cat. It purred like a cat, too. _Let me show you._

“Show me what?” Wells was still gripping the card, so tight his fingertips were going white. He tried to let go, but it clung to him anyway.

 _Let me show you, and you’ll see,_ the voice said, and there was a grin in the tone. Like it thought itself funny.

It was a pretty solid argument, Wells could give it that. “Alright,” he decided, because what was there to lose? He got the feeling that until he gave in, he’d be stuck in this weird field forever, unmoving, still holding onto the stupid Bone Card.

The voice hissed, like water hitting the stovetop, and the card fluttered down to Wells’s shoes.

He woke up at the edge of the woods behind the Griffins’ property, to people calling his name. There were dogs barking, and for a second he thought the voice had just been part of a very surreal dream, and maybe he was still sleeping.

Then one of the dogs—police search dogs, he learned later—pressed its wet nose in his face, and he knew he was awake.

His dad was at Clarke’s house, when the officer that found him brought him back. Abby and Clarke were red-eyed and pale-looking, and his heart sank down to the ground. He hadn’t meant to make them worry. The thought of them crying because of him made him nauseas.

He’d lost the card, too. He’d have to find Clarke a new set.

“Dad,” he started on the drive home, but Thelonious just shook his head. His mom’s hairbrush was sitting on the dash, and every time his dad looked at it, his eyes went all stormy.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, firm, and Wells sighed because he knew what that meant. His dad _always_ said they’d talk later, but they never really did. Thelonious would give a lecture that ended with _I expect better from a Jaha_ , and Wells would feel all mixed up with guilt and resentment. He didn’t _ask_ to be a Jaha.

And then he felt guilty for that, too, because he didn’t _hate_ his dad, or his name. He just didn’t like everything that came with it.

He was grounded for the rest of the weekend, understandably, but Clarke didn’t let that stop her. She slipped in through his window that night, startling him.

“I looked for you all night before my mom called the cops,” she said, worming her way into his bed, shoving him over with sharp elbows and knees. “I thought the spirits took you.”

“I think one did,” he admitted, and then she demanded him to tell her everything, so he explained about the voice, and the field, and waking up in the trees in the morning.

“You might be possessed,” she chirped, and he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

“Yeah,” he said, not sure if he was, either.

They ate pizza for lunch the next day at school, and Wells spent the next half hour vomiting it back up.

Clarke threw herself back into her research. She carried mythological anthologies with her wherever she went, so she could squeeze a few pages in between class or at lunch or before track meets. She looked up every urban legend, every ghost story, every exorcism case in the last century, just to be sure.

It was two weeks before she sank down beside him in the cafeteria. It was lasagna, ordinarily his favorite, but now he was just sort of poking at it with a spork. It’d been _days_ since he’d eaten. Realistically, he should have died by now, or at least collapsed from malnutrition. He did feel a little weaker, and exhausted, but mostly he just felt so _hungry_. And the hungrier he got, the more the voice spoke to him.

 _That kid Roger in your band class seems sort of like a lone wolf_ , it mused, _I bet no one would even miss him._

 _McKenzie from Ceramics has such ugly hands, you’d be doing her a favor by taking one. Just one. No one needs_ both _hands, you know._

But it seemed to like Clarke best. _She’ll probably taste like sunlight_ , it told him. _She might even offer up a limb, if you asked. She’s a good friend like that. She’s a pal._

“You’re a wendigo,” Clarke sighed. There were dark circles under her eyes, and three pencils stuffed in the bird’s nest of her hair. Wells wasn’t sure when she last showered; she looked worse than him. “Or, possessed by a wendigo,” she frowned. “The stories weren’t very clear.”

“What’s a wendigo?” Wells asked, nibbling at a noodle. He didn’t really swallow it, just chewed it around and spat it back out. Just so he could pretend.

Clarke made a face at his plate of mauled pasta. “It’s a Native American spirit. It looks for people who are desperate, either dying or in a bad situation, and offers to help them. The person has to give permission for the spirit to enter them, and once they do, they’re possessed. Or they just become a wendigo, I’m not really sure. Anyway, they eat people.”

Wells choked a little. “They _what_?”

“They eat people,” Clarke repeated with a shrug, like she hadn’t just suggested he go full-on zombie. “They can be dead first,” she added, as if that might offer some reassurance. It didn’t.

“I’m not just going to _eat people_ , Clarke,” Wells hissed, ignoring the voice entirely, even as it got louder in his mind.

It was hard to tune out something that was _inside_ him.

“Then I guess you’re going to just let yourself die,” she snapped, gathering her stack of enormous books to her chest and storming off.

Wells went home that night and dug his father’s Christmas ham out of the freezer. He let it thaw in the tub and swallowed it down raw, getting blood and grease all over his fingers.

He woke up in the middle of the night, needing to vomit. The voice laughed in his ear the whole time.

Cannibalism, as it turned out, wasn’t as hard as Wells thought it would be. If it even _was_ cannibalism, now that he wasn’t human.

Clarke took him to the hospital where her mom worked. Most of the staff knew her by now, from when she’d come over every day after school and draw in the staff lounge, waiting for Abby to get off shift and take her home. Most of them know Wells, too, and so they pass largely unnoticed.

Getting into the morgue was altogether easier than Wells thought it should be, but when he said so, Clarke just rolled her eyes.

“Who’d want to break into a morgue?” she asked, and then smiled. “Except for, you know, wendigo’s and their human sidekicks.”

“So you’re my sidekick, huh?” he asked, a little surprised. He’d always sort of figured he would be Clarke’s sidekick. Clarke was always the favorite. He usually didn’t mind; he didn’t much like the spotlight, anyway.

“Who else is gonna save your ass and make you human again?”

Wells froze to stare at her. The voice was humming, now, and had been for hours, but that was actually easier to ignore. “You think you can fix me?”

Clarke shrugged, pulling one of the cold metal drawers out. The body was covered with a black tarp, and there was mist all around it. Wells thought about just turning around and leaving, continuing with his existence as someone who had never eaten human meat.

“I’m gonna try,” she said, genuinely earnest, because when she’s not being ridiculous, or a sarcastic asshole, that is Clarke’s default. Wells, meanwhile, was trying very hard not to cry. Not because he had anything against crying; he gets that it’s a natural reaction, and often pretty cathartic, but because he didn’t think he should be crying, in case someone walked into the morgue.

Two kids wandering around the morgue just generally fucking around was one thing—two kids in the morgue, sobbing over a dead body while one of them _eats it_ , was another.

So Wells did his best not to cry and nodded, and Clarke nodded back before taking out a fucking _hacksaw_ from her backpack and goes to town on the corpse.

There’s a lot less blood than Wells had expected. All in all, it wasn’t really even that messy—Clarke took off most of a left arm, and then a little of the fleshier bit of a calf, folded them into one of those massive garbage bags that she _also_ had stuffed in her bag, and then closed the drawer up again.

He didn’t realize she’d been wearing surgical gloves until she tore them off, and threw them in one of the parking lot waste baskets. Wells squinted at her, incredulous.

“Are you _actually_ a criminal mastermind?”

“Nope,” she chirped. “But I watch a lot of CSI New York.”

Wells ate the calf bit first, because he really couldn’t convince himself to bite into anything with fingers, and at least when he threw up, he knew it was purely out of disgust.

Clarke rubbed his back the whole time, and chopped the arm up into more manageable bites before sticking them in his freezer, all the way in the back so Thelonious wouldn’t see.

“You’ll get through this,” she promised. “I’m with you, all the way.”

And Wells knew, even if he got the super powers—which was pretty debatable, anyway—Clarke was still the one saving him. He’d always be the sidekick.

Things got easier after that. Wells learned he didn’t actually have to eat all that often, just once every week, and only a little at a time. He could sprinkle bits of liver and intestine over pizza crust, and _pretend_ it was like sausage.

Clarke never gave up on him, though, even as he got altogether _good_ at being a wendigo. The voice came out less and less as he got older, only really ever speaking around people Wells actually liked. It would half-heartedly tell him to eat them, Wells would tell it to fuck off, and it would grumble a little and slink away to the back of his mind again. It was like a mosquito bite; irritating, but survivable. A small itch he barely ever had to scratch.

But Clarke was a woman with a mission, all through junior high and high school, and even into college. She researched and conducted spells and rituals the way a scientist might conduct experiments.

She didn’t really _mean_ to become the neighborhood witch, but in all her studying and experimenting, she started to come up with impossible things—a potion that cured hangovers, a bitter-tasting lemon square that gave people a sense of euphoria ten times as potent as the best pot brownie, a smelling salt that left you enthralled with the first person you saw, a lotion for sprained or arthritic joints. The list was endless, and as Clarke herself had no use for them, she started to give them away.

People would tell their friends, who would tell _their_ friends, who would write about it on their blog, and suddenly Clarke had people emailing and texting her for her latest concoctions—and did she think she could make an actual love potion, and did she have anything for morning sickness, and could she maybe cure this person’s cat’s ulcer?

That last request piqued her interest, and was what convinced her to use her knowledge for good. Particularly, for the good of animals.

“Most people don’t deserve it,” she’d sniffed when Wells had asked why, and she promptly finished the potion that would make dogs virtually invisible to all fleas. “Ticks are trickier,” she frowned, flipping through her recipes all over again.

She was in college now, just a few miles from Wells’s university. Clarke, when she wasn’t single-mindedly focused on some larger-than-life goal, was famously indecisive. She managed to wrangle herself through her first three years as an undeclared major, not wanting to choose between studio art and veterinary sciences.

“You could do both, you know,” Wells had pointed out, and she looked up from her spell book with a glare.

“And be only half as good at both of them? I’d rather do nothing at all—at least then I could give it my undivided attention,” she’d huffed.

Clarke could be fairly overdramatic.

She was working as a temp at the local animal clinic, which Wells would think made the choice an obvious one, but she also part-timed at the library teaching art to kids in their multi-media room. She usually showed up at his dorm room afterwards, because he had a single and an extra futon, and she hated her roommate. He’d know which job she’d worked that day based on whatever gift she had for him—either bits of corpse from the cemetery near her clinic, or some weird sculpture made from wire hangers, from one of her art kids.

He had a dozen weird wire sculptures littering his room. He liked to hang his pens on them, so he always knew where one was.

He was expecting her any minute now, to be honest, and had just heated up two things of instant ramen because she always forgot to eat if he didn’t remind her.

Unless, he’d recently discovered, her work-crush didn’t remind her, first. She had a thing going with the grumpy librarian that worked the afternoon shift with her, which Wells knew about but wasn’t allowed to mention, because Clarke as a general sort of rule did not do actual feelings.

It was hard being such a good best friend, but Wells could handle it. It was his burden to bear, and he reminded her of that, daily.

He’d just finished slipping some colon he’d been saving in his mini-fridge into his box of ramen, and was heading back to his room when he heard it.

A cat. There was a cat in his dorm building. More specifically, there was a pale yellow cat sitting in front of his room, meowing up at him loudly. Wailing, more like. Wells just stared down at it helplessly, each hand filled with a very hot carton of ramen.

“Can I help you?” he said, which in retrospect, is not a very good thing to say to a cat. Cats, as a whole, probably don’t understand English all that well, and even if they do, how would one answer? It would probably be kind of offended that he’d asked.

Except, this cat did answer.

“ _Yes_ , thank God—I knew you would ask!” Clarke—because it _is_ Clarke, her voice and tone exactly—said. Then she padded into his room and hopped up on the futon she’d claimed as her own at the beginning of the year. “Is one of those for me?”

“Can you _eat_ it?” Wells asked, closing and locking his door, because if someone were to walk by and hear them, he’d rather they not think he’s talking to a _cat_.

Cat-Clarke frowned, thinking. Now that he knew it was Clarke, it seemed obvious. Even the expressions were hers, if with a little more whisker involved.

“I think so,” she decided, finally, and he set the cup down for her. “I’d best go slow, though, just in case.” Even as she said it, she dived head-first into the dinner, pretty much inhaling it all.

“What happened?” Wells asked, chewing through his own food as Clarke licked her furry lips.

“I got the incantation wrong,” she scowled, clearly annoyed with herself, and the incantation, and the universe in general, for leading up to it. “I was trying to come up with a spell that would let me understand the cats at the clinic, but obviously, it got a little mixed up.”

“Just a little,” Wells agreed. “Can you fix it?”

“Not without opposable thumbs,” she grumbled, glaring down at her little yellow paws. “Being a cat is _hard_ —do you have any idea how long it took for me to get here? And I got chased by three dogs on the way! One of them was a pitbull, too. I nearly _died_.” For once, Wells is pretty sure she actually wasn’t exaggerating.

“What do you need me to do?”

Clarke beamed over at him—admittedly, as a cat it looked a little funny, but Wells had known Clarke for forever. He knew Clarke like she was another part of him, and so he knew when she was beaming. “I left my phone at the—”

She was interrupted by a quick rapping on the door, followed by the voice of his RA. “Jaha, I definitely heard a cat in there, and I’m hoping you’re just watching adorable Youtube videos. Open the door.”

Wells winced, while Clarke glared over at the door, as if the force of her anger alone could will the person away. It didn’t, obviously, and so his RA knocked again before he could cross over and twist the lock.

Raven Reyes was a senior in the mechanical engineering program, and a shoe-in for valedictorian. She was also the main reason Wells tried to keep Clarke from visiting during normal, day-time hours.

Because Raven Reyes was _gorgeous_ , a genius, and whenever she passed him in the hallways, wearing nothing but a pair of running shorts and a sports bra, she’d give him this smirk that said _I know all your secrets_.

It was the sort of thing Wells had never really known he was into, until he moved into this dorm.

And he had steadfastly refused to let Clarke know about her because, even with her _whatever_ with the grumpy librarian, Clarke was irresistible. She was _always_ the favorite, and even girls who had thought they were straight their whole lives would somehow end up half in love with her by the end.

Clarke wasn’t a terrible friend. She was actually pretty great, and a fairly decent wingman when she wanted to be, so she would have known instantly that Wells was into Raven, and she would have made it her mission to get him a date with his RA, which—it wasn’t that he was opposed to dating Raven, but he wanted to get there on his own.

(Plus he was pretty sure it was against the rules, for an underclassman to date their RA, so.)

Ultimately, that was what it meant, to be Wells Jaha—to be his own person. To earn what he had, deserve what he got, to never do anything unless he absolutely meant to. He never wanted to do what was expected of a _Jaha_ ; he wanted to do what was expected of _Wells_.

It was, in the end, what he hated most about his current state of existence. That he had given in so easily, given up that control, the only control he’d had; of himself. That he’d let another voice into his head, to rule over him.

He did everything he could, to make sure that never happened again.

Wells cracked the door open, enough that he could see Raven’s cocked brow and general _none of that bullshit_ demeanor, but she couldn’t see Clarke.

“Sorry about that,” he said, trying his most charming smile. He could be charming when he wanted to; he just didn’t really want to, all that much.

But Raven was having none of it, and she shouldered her way into the room without a word.

She stared at Clarke smugly, while Clarke just glared back and hissed, back arching up like a properly displeased cat.

“Look, I get it,” Raven started, reaching over to pet Clarke’s chin. Clarke bit her fingers, but she didn’t even seem upset about it. “She’s cute. But you know pets aren’t allowed in the dorms.”

“I know,” Wells agreed. “It’s just for tonight, honest. Just until I find her a proper home.”

Raven nodded, straightening up, and flashed him that smirk again. “Never took you for such a caregiver, Jaha.”

Wells could feel himself flushing, even as he knew Clarke was sizing them both up and coming to all the right conclusions. “Yeah, well. I’m full of surprises.” He bit back a wince at the line, but Raven barked out a laugh.

“Where’d you find her, anyway?”

Wells shrugged. He could feel Clarke staring at him, and pointedly ignored her. “She was just waiting outside the door. I gave her some ramen.”

“Wow, Jaha. A natural provider. I’m sure there’s a lot of nutritional value for cats in those microwavable cups.”

Wells bit back a grin. It would have been easy, for her to just give him a stern talking-to about the cat and then leave, right? But instead she was sitting down on the futon, even while his asshole-best-friend-turned-cat spat at her. They were _bantering_. It was nice.

“You know you can call me Wells, right? We don’t have to be on a last-name basis. I call you Raven.”

“I didn’t know you called me anything,” Raven smirked. “Who do you call me Raven to?”

“My friends,” Wells shrugged.

“Liar,” Clarke said, but she sounded amused, at least. Maybe she’d stop being an asshole to Raven.

“Well, I call you Jaha to mine,” Raven said, smooth as anything, and Wells tried not to think about what it might mean, that she was talking about him. For all he knew, she could have just referenced him as _that weird poli-sci kid that lives on my floor and keeps strange hours_. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“I still prefer Wells, if it’s all the same to you.”

Raven grinned, and it wasn’t cutting or wolfish like most of her facial expressions. Mostly it just looked warm, and Wells _melted_.

Then his phone rang, and the moment was ruined.

It was the theme from _Sabrina the Teenage Witch_ , his ringtone for Clarke, and Wells squinted at her picture on his phone for a minute.

“Should you get that?” Raven asked, bemused, and he swiped green.

“Hello?”

“Hey, do you know Clarke Griffin?” a voice asked. It sounded male, and grumpy enough, so Wells figured it was her mysterious librarian.

“Yes?”

The voice huffed, annoyed. “Well, it just listed you as ZOMB-F-F, and I already tried the Home number, and got an answering machine in Maryland? So I figured you might at least be in the same state, and could come get her phone.”

“Where did she leave it?”

“The library—she’s a mess, you know?” There’s a pause, where he seems to think better of it. “I mean, not in a bad way, she’s just so—one-track minded. Like, she’s obsessed with making sure the kids she teaches are getting enough attention at home and eat three square meals a day, but then she forgets about dinner.”

Wells grinned over at Clarke, who was bristly and wide-eyed on the futon. “Yeah, I know. You must be her coworker. She talks about you a lot.”

“She does?” he asked, surprised. Maybe a little hopeful. “What does she say?”

“Mostly how grumpy you are,” Wells said. Clarke was full-on glaring at him, now, but he pretended not to see. She wasn’t the only one who could wingman. The librarian laughed. “Also really hot.”

Clarke cried out, indignant, and Raven looked at her in alarm.

“Oh.” The librarian cleared his throat. “Well, uh. Tell her it goes both ways, I guess.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty grumpy and hot too,” Wells agreed, and he laughed.

“I’m Bellamy, by the way. Since you called me _her coworker_ , I’m assuming she didn’t tell you my name, which is _just_ like her.”

“It is, yeah. I’m Wells, but you can call me ZOMB-F-F, if you want.”

“Cool, I was hoping for that, honestly. It’s an awesome nickname. So, should I wait for you to come pick up her phone, or something?”

“You could, yeah,” Wells said, eyeing Clarke. “Or you could come drop it off? She should be here by then, and you could give it to her, yourself.”

There was a pause, and then “Sure, that works. Text me the address—or, I guess, text Clarke.”

“See you soon.” Wells hung up and texted Clarke’s phone, and then waited for a thumbs up emoji from Bellamy before tossing his phone back on his bed.

Raven was scratching Clarke’s back when he looked over, with Clarke curled up in Raven’s lap, to spite him.

“So, I’m guessing Clarke’s the hot blonde who visits you every day?” Raven hedged, and Wells tried not to feel too disappointed.

So what, Raven thought Clarke was hot? Everyone thought Clarke was hot, it didn’t mean anything. She could be bi, like Clarke, or she could just have working eyes and an open mind.

“Yeah,” Wells nodded, reaching over to pet Clarke’s ears. They twitched under his hand, to let him know she was still irritated. She was still purring, but in a grumpy sort of way. “My best friend, since we were kids.”

“Cool,” Raven said. “So how long has she been a cat?”

Wells and Clarke froze at the same time, glancing up to see Raven grinning like a shark. A very pleased shark, that had just won a bet or something.

“How long have you known?” Clarke demanded, and Raven rolled her eyes impressively.

“ _Please_ ; you reek of old Latin. What, did you fudge the spell a little?” Clarke bristled in response, and Raven patted her, placating. “Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. Latin’s tricky. How come you don’t just use the Spanish translations? They’re way easier.”

Clarke stood, stretching each of her little legs delicately, like she couldn’t really help it, before yawning and sitting back on her haunches to glare up at her. “Show me.”

“Demanding,” Raven teased, but she dug out her ipad anyway, and brought up some sort of app for witchcraft. “I made it in a coding class sophomore year,” she shrugged, like it was no big deal, and Clarke eyed her appraisingly.

“Once you turn me back, we are exchanging witch hacks,” she declared, and Raven grinned.

“Deal,” she agreed, and bumped a fist against her paw. “Okay, this is gonna feel really fucking weird, fair warning.”

“No weirder than getting turned on by a tomcat,” Clarke shot back, and Raven couldn’t really disagree.

In the end, the reversal spell only took a few minutes—and some yarrow leaves Raven had to fetch from her room—to do, and Clarke was suddenly human again, scrambling to cover herself with a blanket while Wells slammed his eyes shut.

“Gross,” he made a face, and Clarke scowled. They’d taken baths together as kids, but now they were past puberty, and seeing Clarke naked was more than a little disturbing, like walking in on his dad in the shower or something.

“Shut up and find me something to wear, dickhead,” she barked, and Raven laughed.

Wells tossed her a pair of old sweatpants, and a shirt she’d left behind on one of the nights she’d slept over, and turned around again so she could change. When he turned back, she and Raven were hunched over the ipad, going through spells and sharing their weirdest love potion stories.

Bellamy showed up within the hour.

“Who is it?” Raven called when they heard the knock.

“Uh, Bellamy?” a muffled voice called through the door. “The grumpy librarian? I have Clarke’s phone.”

“Not a fucking word,” Clarke hissed, glaring at both of them in turn, before opening the door herself. “Hi,” she said. There was a goofy smile spreading over her face, like she just couldn’t help it, and Wells found it hard to look away. It’d been a while since he’d seen her this _happy_. He’d forgotten what it looked like.

“Hey,” Bellamy grinned. He had freckles, and messy curls, and Wells knew his best friend was doomed.

But the librarian looked just as gone, so he figured she’d be okay. She stepped out into the hall with him, and shut the door behind her.

“So, you’re a zombie?” Raven asked, turning back to him, and Wells choked on absolutely nothing. He must have looked as panicked as he felt, because she took pity on him, patting his shoulder the way she’d pat cat-Clarke’s head. “I’m not gonna tell anyone, or anything,” she shrugged. “Just figured, if you wanted someone else to talk to about it…”

It was a nice thought, but one Wells didn’t really know what to do with. He’d gotten used to being a wendigo, but he’d never actually considered _talking_ about it to anyone that wasn’t Clarke.

The voice itself was beating around in his skull; it was always loud around Raven. Wells tuned it out.

He wets his lips. “How long have you known?”

“A few months now,” Raven shrugged, and he gaped at her. “You were making lasagna, with human brain. My _Tia_ was a necromancer. She had a few zombies that would visit sometimes. She’d make them dinner.”

“I’m not a zombie,” Wells said, finally, because it seemed like a good place to start. “I’m, uh, a wendigo? It’s a Native American spirit—thing. I have to eat human meat once in a while. You just caught me on a brain day.” He winced. _Brain day_. Had he actually just _said_ that?

But Raven just looked amused. “What’s it like? The spirit?”

Wells grinned a little ruefully. It still felt weird, _talking_ about it, but. It was sort of nice, knowing he could. “It wants me to eat you,” he said. “Really bad. It’s always pretty loud around the people I like.”

Raven grinned, cheeks going red, which Wells took as a good sign. “Oh, so you _like_ me?” she teased.

Clearly, she was expecting him to joke about it, but. Now that she knew—about him, and Clarke, and the _wendigo_ —Raven felt possible in a way she never had. He’d wanted her for a while now, which had been hard at first, because Wells tried very hard not to want anything he couldn’t have. It was painful, and pretty much impossible, because everything was so complicated, and he’d pretty much come to terms with the fact that he was going to end up alone.

Which was fine. He’d have Clarke his whole life, and probably whoever she ended up marrying, if she ever decided marriage wasn’t just a social construct. And he’d have his dad, sort of, and Abby. He didn’t want to get greedy.

But God, he _really_ wanted Raven. And she was smiling, and blushing, and she knew what he was, and he was pretty sure she wanted him anyway.

The wendigo wanted her too, sure, but. Not like Wells did, and that was what mattered.

“Yeah,” he said, low, just for her, and took her hand. “I like you.”

“Good,” she chirped. “So, you’re not in love with Clarke?”

Wells blinked at her, and then laughed, because—Raven Reyes was _nervous_ , and asking if he liked another girl. He squeezed her fingers, pulling her closer, so she was almost in his lap. He wasn’t really sure kissing was on the table for tonight—he’d just had a decent amount of human colon, after all, and Raven didn’t seem like the cannibalistic type—but being close was good. It was enough.

“I’m not in love with Clarke,” he confirmed. “We grew up together—me and Clarke, we’re basically the same person. To be honest, it’d probably be really weird if we saw each other like that. She’s like my sister.”

“Just checking,” Raven said, and then slid into his lap and kissed him.

He couldn’t think for a moment, because _Raven Reyes was in his lap, with her tongue down his throat_ , and the wendigo was sort of going crazy in his head, and when Wells came back to reality, his hands had slid up under Raven’s shirt so he could feel the warm skin of her back, and she was grinding shamelessly against him.

She pulled back with a smile, the wolfish one that he recognized, and he felt inexplicably _fond_.

“I _am_ a zombie,” she said, like it was no big deal. “So, you know. We can be undead together.”

“Cool,” Wells breathed, because now she was leaning in to mouth at his neck. “Awesome.”

“You’re taking me to dinner,” she said, grinning. “It doesn’t have to be _now_ , but. Just so you know.”

“I was going to, anyway,” he defended, sliding a hand up even further, only to realize she _wasn’t wearing a bra_ —he was probably going to die, here, with Raven Reyes in his lap.

Oh, but what a way to go. She could probably bring him back. Maybe with Clarke’s help. Or her _Tia’s_.

“I was working up to it,” he added, pressing his mouth to her shoulder. “If you had just _waited—”_

“I’m impatient,” Raven said, kissing him again, short and chaste, and then tore off her shirt before leaning back in. “Besides, it all worked out, right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It really did.”


End file.
